A blog about video games, how awesome they are, and how much better they can be.

Monday, May 14, 2012

Super Smash Bros. The Next Generation - Day 12

Psychic Warriors, Monsters in my Pocket, and the Fastest Stage on Earth!

I took a break from playing Binding of Isaac in celebration of Mother's Day to bring you this special bulletin. Now would be as good a time as any to point out that you won't be seeing any (directly) third-party characters in my listings, and deliberately so. The only exceptions to this are Sonic and Snake who are already through the door, and certain properties that appear only on Nintendo and would be considered to be "Second Party" properties, like Professor Layton. Back to adventure!

The Veteran - Pokemon Trainer

The creators of Project M found it useful to break apart the individual Pokemon of the Pokemon Trainer team into single characters to fill up their roster, and I think that's awesome... for a mod. Doing that in reality is filling up a roster of 35-45 characters with 7 Pokemon, and that's just too many. Pokemon Trainer was a great idea at shoving more characters into the roster with a unique mechanic befitting of the franchise they come from, so for the record, we're keeping that mechanic.

With that being said, I think it's also important to try and cram even more of the pocket-sized bastards into the game, and the best choice for this is with a good ol' fashioned Alternate Costume swap. Suddenly; Squirtle is Cyndaquil, Ivysaur is Bayleef, and Charizard is a Feraligatr that can arbitrarily hover around. Or perhaps Charizard is replaced by Empoleon? Squirtle is now Chimchar, and Torterra replaces Ivysaur. Basically, start pulling out some other regions. A small search found that somebody has already modded this in somewhere, at least for the Trainer himself.

I does want.

Isaac!

The Assist Trophies was a point of contention for people, and I think inappropriately so. I understand being upset that your characters of choice aren't playable, but considering they were scrapped, wouldn't being happy that they were still more prominently in the game be a good thing? A lot of characters, love them as I do, are not fully roster material. Jill from Drill Dozer has two moves; drill and jump. But there was one character that I would have placed money on being playable, and I was shocked to find him show up as only an Assist Trophy; and that's obviously Isaac from Golden Sun.

He's got two games to pull a multitude of abilities from, and unlike most sword fighters, he has his Psyenergy to give him some interesting ranged abilities. From the physics based Move to an array of Summons, there's just so much they could have used. I feel like he may have been cut last minute and turned into an Assist Trophy to keep him involved, but that could just be me projecting. In either case, I really would like to see him as playable in the next game. Nintendo's new IP's have been fairly slim in recent years, with Pikmin being the most recent that received a slot in Smash Bros.'s roster. Isaac would be filling a desperately wide gap.

Do a character swap with the hero of Golden Sun: Dark Dawn and his final smash could be the spell Ragnarok, bringing a flaming sword down upon his enemies.

Stage: Sonic Colors - Tropical Resort

Provided the Blue Blur returns for another round of fisticuffs with Nintendo's all-stars, I think a more Nintendo-specific stage wouldn't be a bad choice. So the perfect choice was Tropical Resort from Sonic Colors. Partially, I just absolutely love the visual style of this stage. I'm a sucker for photoshopped wallpapers of spacey planets in the background of tropical beaches, and I also like neon colors. Really, everything about the setting for the iconic Sonic Colors stage just stuck with me. Oh, and I also like twangy surf music, so that also helped.

I hope you guys like music. There's a lot of it. The idea was to try and catch a mix of songs that have happened since the last Smash and versions of songs from Sonic Generations that I think deserve a spot.

The Music of Tropical Resort

Sonic Colors - Tropical Resort

Being that Tropical Resort is the stage... makes sense, doesn't it?

Sonic Generations - Green Hill (modern)

Not including this would be like not including World 1-1 in a Mario collection.

Sonic Generations - Stardust Speedway: Bad Future

It was a tossup between this and Palmtree Panic, and this had a remix, so I went with it.

A great battle tune made even greater with this 3DS exclusive Sonic Generations tune.

Sonic Generations - Rooftop Run (modern)

I could just as easily call this Sonic Unleashed but... well one of those is a good game. (It's not Unleashed.)

Sonic Generations - City Escape (Classic)

City Escape is one of my favorite songs. Period. It was at the right place at the right time in my life, and it holds a huge spot in my heart. I'm not saying it's the best, mind you, but I love it. Well this version played on that, my love of classic electronic tunes, and my love stupid auto-tune, and just kind of sucker punched me in the heart.

Sonic Generations - Water Palace (modern)

Back to back, this song isn't half bad. Another 3DS exclusive, this time borrowing from Sonic Rush on the DS.

Sonic Colors - Reach for the Stars

A sappy but awesome tune, the theme to Sonic Colors. Or Colours if you're some kind of monster.

I hope you enjoyed that overload of amazing music rocking you to your chocolatey centers. I ended up having to cut my list in half just to get down to those 10. What are some of your favorite songs, my suave and sensible reader? The comment place would be a great place to express yourself, you know. You should give it a shot.